Shanghai
You can be here in May for about €1,143, 4 days, direct.
Why now
Prime time in May: 26°C days.
Spring and autumn are the pleasant seasons; the plum rains in early summer and the humid heat that follows are hard, and the National Day and Lunar New Year holiday weeks move hundreds of millions of people at once. Visa-free transit rules change often and decide whether a stopover is easy.
Best months here: April, October, November. May is not one of them — the label above measures the month against a fixed bar, not against the rest of the year here. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
Shanghai is the city where China shows off: the Bund's 1920s banks facing Pudong's towers, plane-tree streets in the former French Concession, and a cashless, app-driven daily life that visitors have to plug into fast. It suits people who want a modern, walkable big city with good food and low friction rather than imperial history.
What you can do
- 01Walk the Bund at dusk, then cross to Lujiazui by the Line 2 metro or the tourist tunnel.
- 02Eat xiaolongbao at Jia Jia Tang Bao or Nanxiang, and shengjianbao at a breakfast window.
- 03Wander the French Concession: Wukang Road, Anfu Road, the lilong lanes off Huaihai Road.
- 04See the Shanghai Museum's bronzes at People's Square, then the Power Station of Art on the river.
- 05Take the metro to Zhujiajiao for canals and a boat, an hour west.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Stay in the former French Concession or Jing'an for walks and evenings; the Bund is for the view, Pudong for business, and neither for wandering.
Unusual things
- ◦The Propaganda Poster Art Centre, a basement apartment gallery in Xuhui with thousands of Mao-era posters.
- ◦M50 art district on Moganshan Road, warehouses of galleries along Suzhou Creek.
- ◦The Jewish Refugees Museum in Hongkou, in the former Ohel Moshe synagogue of the wartime ghetto.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Entry requirements · IT passport
China: 30-day visa-free trial for many European passports (check validity dates).
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Maglev, 8 min, ~€6; metro line 2, 60 min
- Car needed?
- No — walkable or good public transport
- Getting around
- The metro is enormous, cheap and signed in English; set up Alipay or WeChat Pay with a foreign card before arriving, since cash is grudgingly accepted. The Maglev from Pudong airport takes eight minutes to Longyang Road, then the metro; Hongqiao airport is on Line 2 and next to the high-speed rail station.
- Clock
- 5 hours ahead of Istanbul (Asia/Shanghai) derived
- Daylight
- 13.7 hours of daylight in May · sunrise 04:59, sunset 18:42 derived
- Currency
- CNY
Good to know
Foreign apps, maps and email are blocked without a VPN installed before arrival, and tea-house and art-student scams around Nanjing Road target visitors.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 4 days from Istanbul in May, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
São Paulo
Santorini
Mykonos
Dakar
Beijing
Seoul